Project 1: Reading instruction for students with intellectual disabilities who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC)
This project was a reading intervention with 40 students with intellectual disabilities who use AAC, aged 6–14 years.
Project information
The project was lead by doctoral research fellow Line Britt Ulriksen.
The supervisors and project members were professor Anders Nordahl-Hansen, associate professor Kenneth Larsen, professor Hugo Cogo-Moreira, and Marthe Bilet-Mossige
Funding: 1 900 000 NOK, through the Portfolio plan for Education and competence by the Research Council of Norway.
Collaboration partners: Østfold University College, University of South-Eastern Norway, and 14 schools from four municipalities.
Studies in the project
Description of the project
None of the students could decode syllables or words before the intervention began. The study used a multiple single-case design with multiple randomized baselines. Students were randomly assigned to four groups, each starting the intervention at different times. The groups received between two and five baselines and between 13 and 18 months of effective intervention time. During the intervention, students worked systematically and explicitly with adapted reading material, “Lesing for alle” (“Reading for All”), based on the evidence-based program Accessible Literacy Learning (ALL) by Light & McNaughton (2011). Students were tested in early literacy skills over 18 months, and their communicative competence was measured using the McArthur Bates Communication Development Inventories (MB-CDI) and a standardized reading test (OL64). Data analysis showed significance only for sound-blending. However, it is important to consider individual results, which indicated that nearly half of the students developed phonological awareness. Through adapted reading tests and OL64, 13 students demonstrated that they had cracked the reading code. An additional three students showed phonological reading skills through the program’s tests, though they did not take the standardized word reading test. The common factor among the students who acquired phonological reading skills was their mastery of many letter-sound connections at the start of the intervention.
Trial registration: NCT05709405. Registered 23 January 2023.
Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research (Sikt) evaluated the project in October 2022, Sikt registration form: 988724.